The case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, a dispute over a vast fortune left by a miser, has occupied the Court of Chancery through generations of the family, in this 1852–53 masterpiece by Charles Dickens. When Lady Dedlock faints upon recognizing the handwriting in one of the documents pertaining to the case, her lawyer Tulkinghorn suspects a hidden secret, and an opportunity for blackmail. But the unscrupulous solicitor is soon found dead, and it is Detective Inspector Bucket—"the first detective proper of English fiction ... with his fat forefinger, his false bonhomie, his omniscience and his indifference to everything other than solving the crime" (John Sutherland)—who must solve the mystery. The novel also features Dickens's only female narrator, heroine Esther Summerson.